


Beautiful Trauma

by americanchemicals



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Drunk Driving, Five Stages of Grief, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-31
Updated: 2018-01-18
Packaged: 2019-02-25 20:42:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13220862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/americanchemicals/pseuds/americanchemicals
Summary: Shane as he goes through the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.





	1. Denial

The concept of human life was the most complex thing that people understood but didn't truly understand. It seems that there will always be things that people don't understand about the brain, or the human soul. As a logical person, it was hard for Shane to try and grasp at the concept that once people were dead, they couldn't come back. Science understood reproduction, the creation of life in that sense, and psychologists had a grasp on development of the brain and that sort of stuff. It wasn't that Shane didn't understand what death was, he had pets growing up that had died that had introduced death to him. 

Honestly, his thoughts were so jumbled that it was hard to be clear about what exactly was going through his brain at the moment. 

Ryan's body was technically alive, but his brain had no activity, which meant that there was nothing that modern medicine go do to fix him. There were no more miracles at this point, the second the doctors pulled the plug the only difference was that the rest of Ryan's body had caught up with his brain. His soul, which was something that science did not really understand, had gone. Now there was nothing, Ryan Bergara simply ceased to exist from this planet. Thousands of people died every day, thousands that simply ceased to exist. In the long run, wasn't everyone insignificant, or whatever? Just a speck of dust in comparison to the rest of time. 

But he couldn't be dead, because Ryan hadn't been insignificant. He had meant everything to Shane. Shane needed him to breathe, to function. His logical side was telling him that there was nothing that could be done as he stared at his boyfriend's motionless body, but his other side had him screaming at the doctors to do something, anything. 

Because he couldn't be gone if he was still breathing, even if it was with the assistance of a machine. His heart was still beating, which meant that he was legally alive. But when they turned those machines off, and his heart gave out, Shane felt an ache in his own chest. Ryan was no longer Ryan, just a corpse that looked like him. And Shane couldn't accept that, he couldn't just accept that Ryan was no longer in his life. 

Any moment now, air would fill his lungs again, and Ryan would sit up. He would look good as new, skin no longer ashen, and he would smile at Shane and tell him that he was hungry and they would go and get fast food and eat it together on their couch and pretend that they weren't putting themselves at risk for heart disease and diabetes and obesity with the amount of grease and fat they consumed in their daily diet. 

And they would cuddle together on that same couch afterwards and binge Netflix and watch scary movies and not even get to the end of the movie because they would get distracted by kisses and they'd move to the bedroom and go from there. 

They'd still carpool together to work everyday, and steal each other's coffee, and go to shoots together across the country. And from those shoots they'd develop more and more memories, more inside jokes, strengthen their bond. They had existed simultaneously for way too long now to give that up, they spent every goddamn second together. Their personal lives and work lives had blended together, becoming indiscernible. They were Ryan&Shane, it was their identity, it was how everyone knew them. If you see Ryan, Shane will be close behind, and vice versa. 

It was hard to understand that once someone was gone, you'd still have memories of them, but you wouldn't be able to make new memories with them. 

But Ryan couldn't die. He was way too young, not even in his thirties yet. Young people had much smaller chances of dying, statistically, right? 

Ryan was young, and loved by so many people, and he was such a brilliant person. He didn't deserve death, so surely he wouldn't die. He still hadn't gotten engaged, been married, had a family of his own. And he deserved those things. He deserved those things and more, and he hadn't had those yet, so he couldn't die. 

But as they took the sheets and covered Ryan's body, and eventually wheeled him away, it really hit him. His entire body went cold, knocking the air out of his own lungs, and he felt lightheaded and sick. 

Ryan really was gone.

He threw up, and a nurse wrapped him in a blanket and his tears turned into loud, devastating sobs that shook his whole being. He felt like his own life was leaving his body, and that he wouldn't ever be able to stop crying. 


	2. Anger

Shane was angry.

No, he was furious. 

He had punched his wall, and then his mirror for good measure. He sloppily pulled the glass out with a tweezers and then wrapped his hand, taking some pain medication that would only stop the physical pain, but not the one in his heart. 

It wasn't fair. He was angry, and he wanted to kill the bastard that murdered Ryan. Realistically, he couldn't go through with this plan, because that man was currently sitting in the county jail awaiting trial. 

But goddammit, it wasn't fair that that monster got to live when his Ryan didn't. All Ryan had done was try to cross the street, to go to the store to grab some meds for Shane because he had a horrible stomachache. 

Shane was angry at himself, too, because if it wasn't for him Ryan wouldn't have needed to cross that street in the first place. And if he hadn't been in that crosswalk that late at night, that drunk driver wouldn't have hit him, and he would be alive right now instead of in a morgue. 

But that monster, Shane refused to even say his name. He didn't deserve it. What kind of person drives after drinking that much? In Los Angeles, it's not that hard to call for a cab or Uber. It infuriated him so much, it didn't even matter that his lawyer reassured him that  _he_ would rot in prison for life for what  _he_ did. 

If ghosts and demons were real, that man was the closest thing to the Devil that Shane had ever come across in his whole life. 

All Ryan had wanted was to be a good and caring boyfriend, trying to be helpful when his partner was sick. And now he was gone, dead, and Shane wanted to scream and yell and burn his fucking apartment to the ground. 

Because it wasn't fair, and it never would be. The way Ryan died would never be justified, and even if he got justice in the legal sense, it wasn't the justice that Shane wanted.

And yeah, Ryan probably wouldn't approve of him going out and attacking his murderer, because he was that kind of person. Ryan had always been all bark and no bite, he would say he wanted to do awful things to someone but could never work up the courage to actually do it. 

And that pissed off Shane too, because even if he got charged with manslaughter for avenging Ryan, Ryan would probably be up in heaven or wherever dead people went and frown down on him. 

Shane wished he knew for certain that there was some sort of afterlife that he could look forward to. That he could know for certain that Ryan had been reincarnated or not. That he could know if he was somewhere, watching him, and that once Shane died too he'd be able to finally see his smiling face again and tell him how much he loved him. 

He didn't know if this anger inside of him would ever dissipate. It made him restless as it stirred inside of him, made him pace around and ponder too much about everything was unfair and unjustified, which only made him even angrier. Angry wasn't even the right word to describe how he felt, he was more than angry. 

He was more than enraged. He was more than furious. There wasn't a single word in the English dictionary that described how much he needed to walk up to Ryan's murderer and give that man a taste of his own medicine. Maybe it was a bit sadistic of a thought, but Shane needed to see the life leave that man's eyes like it had Ryan's. 

He hated that everything was ruined for him now, how he'd never be able to not hear the name Ryan without being filled with bittersweet memories. He'd never be able to see a bottle of alcohol without being reminded of what happened, of all the things that it took out of his life. The taste of popcorn was now like eating ash, and horror movies made him weep more than he ever had in his life. And he hated that, because he was never going to be the same person he was before, in one split second he had become this person so unfamiliar to himself. There'd never be anything that could fix that either. Like a smashed vase, even if you glued all the pieces back together, the cracks would always be there, visible to the entire world. 

He was angry at people for all their empty apologies. He was tired of hearing "I'm sorry for your loss," because even if they were, they would move on while he was still stuck in the past. He was furious at his company for monetizing Ryan's death, making a video about how great of a person he was, and using it as a PSA to not drink and drive. It made him physically sick, and he wanted to scream at every single coworker that had been involved in its production, even if they meant it with good intentions. 

Shane was angry at everything, and it didn't stop until the day of the funeral. 

The second he stepped out of his car, the second his foot hit the ground, it vanished. He couldn't explain the reason behind it, but it was like an invisible weight was lifted off his shoulders. 

Well, not all of it. He still wanted to strangle  _that_ man with every fiber of his being. 

But, he would be okay, at least for the time being. 


	3. Bargaining

If there was a God, Shane needed him to exist now more than ever.

As a child, he had prayed for stupid mundane things like toys or for a pet parrot, but as he began to question more about the universe these prayers diminished. He had lost any faith he had quickly as he began to grow into the skeptic he was, but at the moment he felt like he was trying to grow into some sort of believer.

A believer, like Ryan.

But if science couldn't bring Ryan back, then neither could some mystical higher power. Otherwise, tons of people would be coming back to life every day.

No, Shane was praying for a different sort of miracle, if one could call it that.

"Alright, Ryan, I'm probably going to kick myself later for trying this... But please, if you're with me right now, please give me some sort of sign," Shane said to the empty apartment. An audio recorder sat on the coffee table in front of him, while he sat hunched over on the couch. He would go over the audio later for hours, listening for even the smallest of peculiar sounds.

"I even have this fucking thing," Shane laughed, turning the spirit box over in his hands. Flipping the switch to turn the damned thing on, all it spat back was radio silence, just a bunch of garbage white noise.

"C-can you say my name?" he asked, tears running down his face. He wasn't entirely sure why he was crying, maybe it was because of Ryan, or maybe some part of him was crying about how pathetic he had become.

The spirit box said a bunch of words, but they were all unrelated to each other and with so many gaps between each one that it was obviously the actual radio and not any 'ghostly interference.' Even Ryan would have dismissed it, not finding it convincing enough to put in the final cut.

The final cut. Shane was still thinking about Unsolved, about if he should continue the show. His chest tightened again as he pondered the thought. He wouldn't replace Ryan, because it would already hurt too much trying to do the show without him.

He turned off the spirit box, tossing it aside to the other end of the couch.

"Do you see this? I hope you're laughing your ass off right now. This is your chance, Ryan!"

His shouting was met with complete silence.

"Please, prove it to me," he whispered, "Prove it to me that ghosts are real."

The hair on the back of his neck stood up, because he thought he felt a weight on his shoulder, but he knew it was his imagination playing tricks on him. He wanted something to happen so bad, that his brain was making stuff up so that it would happen.

"Prove it to me!" he screamed, standing up from the couch and flipping the stupid couch. The spirit box fell off, sliding onto the hardwood floor. He panicked, rushing over to make sure it wasn't broken, but it didn't even have a scratch on it. He flipped it back on, and he felt a rush of relief as the radio static greeted him noisily.

And if sitting on the couch and turning on that dumb box and the audio recorder became a daily occurrence, he would never admit it. Because even if he didn't get any concrete response, he still felt connected with Ryan every time he did it.

He could pretend that he wasn't searching for Ryan, but instead searching for some other spirit with Ryan right there next to him.


	4. Depression

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: depression, mentions of suicide

The thing about depression, is that at first, you don't really feel that depressed. You don't notice that you're suddenly spending every single second of the day aimlessly staring at the wall. You don't notice that it doesn't matter anymore if you stop showering, stop brushing your teeth. Hygiene is the last thing on your mind, because all you can focus on is your own feeling of emptiness. 

Depression doesn't feel like sadness. It just feels... like you're depressed. It doesn't matter if you stop going in to work, because the things that once made you feel purpose are now just meaningless in the grand scheme of things. Who cares if you're employed, it's not like anyone cares about you anyways. All those people that are constantly texting and calling you are just doing it for appearances, they don't actually give a damn. 

It's easy to spend all day sleeping, because you're already in bed anyways, and it's the most productive thing you can do since you're there. But sometimes, late at night, or even in the earliest hours of the morning, you lay awake, staring at the ceiling. It's impossible to sleep then, because your brain is being so loud, but eerily quiet at the same time. It's telling you over and over again how worthless it at is, how worthless you are, but through an abyss of silence. Your thoughts are everything and nothing, all the fucking time, and you don't know how much more you can take. 

You think about how easy it would be to just end it all. No one would miss you, and if they did, they're already mourning the loss of another person. They would call it tragically beautiful, you think. His lover dies and he can't bear the thought of being alone in the world, so he takes his own life to be with him. He then reminds himself that it's morally wrong to romanticize suicide, but he can't help it. 

At the same time, he doesn't have the energy to do it. He thinks about all the effort that goes into the act, about how he would have to arrange his belongings for his family to go through once he's gone. He doesn't want to be a burden, he couldn't do that to them when they've never done anything wrong. It'd be awful to force them to have to go through all his shit like he had to with Ryan's. Every single object reminds him of some stupid memory, something that's now just bitter remnants of happiness. He wants to burn it all, but knows he would never be able to bring himself to do something like that. He loves those memories too much, despite everything. 

He hasn't eaten anything in days. Sometimes he drinks water just because his throat gets so dry it hurts to swallow. He looked in the mirror for awhile after using the bathroom, and he knows he looks like shit. Eyes sunken, eclipsed by dark circles, the skin beginning to cling to his face. He reminds himself of a corpse. He looks more dead than Ryan did at his own funeral, which makes Shane laugh, but it's weak and dies too quickly. 

He can't even bring himself to watch television, or scroll through twitter, things that were once mundane to him now seem utterly pointless. Life in general, seems pointless. 

When his brother comes to check up on him, and finds him in the state he's in, he doesn't care. He's comfortable this way, slowly destroying himself, because as his body slowly shuts down, he tells himself that maybe Ryan will magically appear. Ghost Ryan would slap him, tell him to stop this madness. But until something that drastic happens, he won't stop, he'll keep going until it kills him. 

And it almost does. As Finn shakes him, yelling his name, he can't find the energy in him to respond. His vision is spotty and there's a metallic taste in his mouth, and he's okay with it. He'll do anything to see Ryan again. 

 


	5. Acceptance

Things were going to be okay for Shane.

After being admitted to the hospital, and fighting a lot with his family over his admission, he slowly adjusted to his temporary environment. His therapist was nice enough, talking to him about how he felt, how to cope properly, ways to remember Ryan without feeling like he had abandoned him somehow.

It wasn't an easy process. There were some times when he still felt extremely angry, extremely sad, like a roller coaster of emotions that would never end. He knew that there would always be a gap in his heart, that he would never stop loving him, but that with time the searing pain would become a scar. A scar that would sometimes irritate him, a constant reminder to its presence, but he would learn to live with it. It wouldn't define who he was, but a part of him, a chapter in his life.

And there was nothing wrong with not fully letting go. Talking to others who had lost people close to them, people they loved, he wasn't alone. He wasn't surrounded by this suffocating feeling that no one understood his pain, because they were right there, able to talk him through it as he battled with his inner turmoil over the situation. 

Death was a natural part of life. Everyone died, and they couldn't know when they would die, couldn't know what statistic would be the one to take them out for good. But Shane grew to become okay with this, accept that one day he might see Ryan once more. Nothing had ever been confirmed about the afterlife, but that was fine too. Because even if Ryan was gone, physically, Shane would always have his memories. And those memories were something that no drunk driver could ever take from him, they were closely guarded in his heart, safe from the world. 

-

Leaving the hospital, depression free, Shane didn't really feel like a "new" man. Sure, he was different then from when he had been admitted, but it was a gradual change, not a sudden one. Everything took time, and he kind of liked it that way. He felt better knowing that it was a slow process to grieve, because it felt like it was more respectful than suddenly waking up one day and being okay with everything that had happened to him. 

Going back to Buzzfeed was hard. Everyone was walking around Shane like they were stepping on eggshells, not sure how to handle him. He gave them light smiles that he knew only partially reached his eyes, but he wanted to reassure them that he wasn't some sort of ticking bomb that was suddenly going to go off. 

He didn't make a video, about his grief, not at first. He already felt like so much of his life was on the internet, and he had enjoyed his privacy in the past few weeks. But at the same time, he knew that he wasn't the only person grieving, not the only person that had loved someone and lost them. Many people had loved Ryan, maybe not as much as he did, but to some capacity, and they grieved his death too. 

And if he could share his story, then maybe it could help someone else, too. 


End file.
